Hereafter part 1: The Void Beyond
by calliope821
Summary: One month after the tragedy, Danny's family is still a mess, Sam hovers on the edge of insanity and Tucker has to find a way to keep it all together. He and Sam have a plan to find closure, but what they find instead may be more than they can handle.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hello fans! **

**So, I've decided to give Young Justice a break and get back into the DP fandom for a little while. Hooray! I'm super excited; this was my first fandom EVER and still my favorite on the site (though YJ is a close, close second). If any of you were following my first DP fanfic, 'A Matter of Time', then you will have noticed that that piece was taken down. Don't panic; it'll be back up after a little bit as the second installment of a trilogy called 'The Hereafter.' This story is the first installment in that trilogy. The third installment will be called 'Lazarus', and if you know your Biblical history then that might be a little bit of a spoiler... or so you think. **

**Anyways, as I have said I am super excited about this trilogy and I will try to update once or twice a week but I apologize in advance if I have to skip a week every now and then. Y'know, life happens, and stuff :)**

**I hope you enjoy! Rated T for character death (sort of- better safe than sorry!)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any characters associated with Nickelodeon. However, Christina Hughes, Tucker's girlfriend, is my OC. **

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><p><em>I can't believe we're actually going through with this.<em>

_ It's been exactly one month since the day Danny died. His family's still a wreck; his parents had no clue, no warning that something like this could happen. They were working on a cure, and they were close. It felt wrong to tell them that they wouldn't need to work on it anymore. I remember the look in Maddie's eyes when the truth finally sunk in. It's a memory I will carry to my grave, knowing that I said the words that shattered a mother's heart and stole her son away from her. _

_ Jazz still can't look her parents in the eye. She was there when it happened, and she blames herself. I won't say that she shouldn't, because that's not entirely true, but I still hate to see her this way, see how this tragedy is taking its toll on her. Gone is the chirpy, motivated, lovingly overprotective 'big sister'. Now she can barely drag herself out of bed in the morning; she's a shell of her former self, irrevocably convinced that her brother's death was her fault alone. She needs real help, but it's hard to be there for her when sometimes I can't even stop myself from blaming her a little, too._

_ Sam worries me the most. She took Danny's last promise to heart, and refuses to listen to reason. Making that promise to her the night he died kept Sam alive then, but now it's proving to cause more harm than good. She thinks about nothing else, can't wait for death to come knocking at her door next because she's convinced that they'll be reunited on the other side. I've had to stop her, twice, from taking her own life, and they were both close calls. I tried to tell her that Danny would have tried to find us, contact us by now, and the fact that he hasn't clearly suggests that he's moved on. We don't really know much about the afterlife, or why there are ghosts, and I've told Sam that it's dangerous to assume anything—but as I said, she will not see reason. "He promised me," is all she will say. Every day she gets closer and closer to breaking, and if she reaches that point I don't think I'll be able to help her. _

_ That's why I came up with my plan. I doubt it will produce results, but I'm desperate. I know Danny wouldn't want to see Sam like this, so close to ending her life because of him—that's why he made her that promise, a promise he didn't know if he could even keep._

_ Part of me knows I should let him go. He's gone, we're here; shouldn't we let him rest in peace? Holding on to him so tightly, like Sam does, is unhealthy. But the other part of me wants this plan to succeed. I want to find him—not just for Sam's sake, but for his. Finding him will mean that he's keeping his promise. He'll still have his honor, and I won't forever have to live my life knowing that the last words my best friend spoke were a lie._

_ I can't believe we're really going to go through with this. But I hope we find him._

Tucker's hands hovered over the keyboard as he stared at that last line for a moment, lost in his own thoughts. Then, with a deep sigh, he saved the document in the 'Journal' folder and closed the laptop with a soft _click._

"How's the autobiography coming?" Christina asked jokingly, coming into the dining room with two plates stacked high with pancakes. They smelled wonderful; Tucker breathed deeply as she placed one of the plates in front of him and sat down with the other one.

"Have I told you yet how incredible you are?" he moaned blissfully around a mouthful of delicious pancake.

She laughed. "I'm not sure if you're in love with me, or with my pancakes."

Tucker swallowed and gave her a mock-serious look. "Oh, I'm definitely in love… with your pancakes."

She feigned outrage, slapping him playfully on the shoulder. He pretended to flinch.

"I'm kidding," he said.

"I know."

He smiled, a brief, faltering smile that faded all too quickly. Christina noticed every time, how a smile never stayed on his face for long and his laugh still sounded empty and hollow. She hadn't known Danny very well at all, but she knew that he had been Tucker's best friend for years and could only imagine how much it still hurt to know that he was gone, for good. She had a feeling that a lot of Tucker's journal entries just now were about Danny Fenton.

She also had a feeling that Tucker was hiding something from her. It had been going on for a while now, and she knew that the journal on his computer would tell her what she wanted to know; now it was just a matter of getting up the courage to look. She wasn't sure she wanted to know badly enough to go around him and invade his privacy like that, but she knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't tell her if she asked, and the more she thought about it, the more she desperately wanted to know what he was up to. It had something to do with Danny, and she suspected it also had something to do with Sam, a person she knew almost nothing about. Tucker had brought Sam to their house twice in the past month, insisting that she sleep on their couch. Christina never found out why, and both times Sam was gone again before they woke up in the morning. The next few days after each of these incidents, Tucker had seemed more worried and upset than usual, but became strangely deaf if Christina tried to ask about it.

He was trying to protect her, she knew. There were some things in his past, some things left behind in Amity Park, that he didn't want her to be a part of. She'd been fine with it at first, but no more. Last month she'd caught a glimpse into the hidden part of his life, and now it wouldn't stop nagging at her, eating at her, always there in the back of her mind—a mystery. She'd had her first glimpse, and now she needed to find out the rest of the story.

Today, she decided. She was going to read Tucker's journal and find out the truth.

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><p><strong>AN: as a parting note, may I just add that review alerts in my inbox make me happier than chocolate ice cream? Which, if you know me at all, makes me pretty darned happy. Reviews = Love!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Whew, long chapter alert! Sorry this story is kinda slow starting out, but it'll pick up soon (assuming the characters cooperate with me!) More reviews might help the action pick up a bit... Tucker and Christina like the attention almost as much as I do, though I can't speak for Sam (and for those of you wondering, I promise she actually will be in this story eventually- hopefully within the next chapter or two). Enjoy!**

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><p>The biggest problem, Christina realized, was that Tucker took his laptop with him absolutely <em>everywhere.<em>

He was like a five-year-old who just couldn't give up a ratty old baby blanket. Only worse. He took it to work with him, which meant that for most of the day she had no chance to try anything—barring sneaking into his office while he was at lunch, which she was almost ready to try before she realized he probably toted the dumb thing along with him even then.

_Maybe he'll be tired when he gets home, take a nap on the couch before dinner, and I can swipe it then,_ she thought without really hoping. True to routine, the instant he got home, out came the laptop. He would sit at the kitchen table with his eyes glued to the screen; scanning news headlines, responding to e-mails and Facebook updates, playing online chess (or World of Warcraft, if he thought she wasn't looking), and whatever else it was he did to unwind before dinner.

If he kept true to form, she wouldn't get her chance until after he was sound asleep. _I can wait that long, _she thought. As it turned out, though, she didn't need to.

She was setting the table for dinner—having banished Tucker and his laptop to the living room—and was just about to go get the casserole out of the oven, when she heard a knock on the front door. With a sigh, she stripped off her oven mitts and took a step towards the front hallway. _Great timing, _she thought in frustration. Now dinner would probably burn, and they would have to eat cold cereal _again—_

"I'll get it, Christina!" Tucker called from the living room. She heard him get up, cross the hallway, and open the door. And suddenly she was curious. Few people came to visit them; they had no neighbors close by, the house was too far out of the way for door-to-door salesmen or Girl Scouts selling cookies, and they hadn't lived in the area long enough to have any friends who would come visiting on a whim. Who could it be?

Trying not to make a sound, she crept to the wall that separated the dining room from the front hallway and pressed her ear against it. She could hear Tucker's voice, though not his words; he was keeping his voice low but at the same time he sounded agitated, urgent. When he paused, she pressed even closer to the wall, trying to make out the voice of the visitor, but she couldn't hear a thing. After a moment, Tucker spoke again—a terse 'good-bye'—and then the door slammed. Christina jumped back and darted into the kitchen as quietly as possible, donning her oven mitts, yanking the slightly over-crisped casserole from the oven, and striding calmly back into the dining room just as Tucker came in from the hallway, looking a little dazed.

"Who was that, sweetie?" she asked, as casually as she could.

"Hm? Oh, no one. Nothing important. Wow, that looks delicious! Let's eat, shall we?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You're hiding something from me. Who was at the door?"

"I told you, it's not important."

"Tucker, you're a rotten liar. Just tell me what's going on, okay?"

He wouldn't look at her. "It's better that you don't know. Please, Christina, let's talk about something else—anything else!—just, don't ask me about _this._ It's for your own good."

"That's the worst thing in the world you could have said just now. I need to know what's going on, Tucker! You've been hiding something from me ever since we moved here—before, even. It's been driving me crazy, wondering what could be so horrible in your life that you can't even share it with _me—_"

"Maybe that's why I don't _want_ to share it with you! Because it was so horrible. You don't know everything about what happened last month, Christina, and trust me, you're better off not knowing. Trust me, okay?"

"How can you ask that when you don't trust _me_? I know there's more to this that what happened last month. It has something to do with whatever happened when you lived in Amity Park—which is something _else_ you refuse to talk about! Tucker, if we're going to get married, then I _need _to know these things about your life, otherwise…" she couldn't finish that thought. She wouldn't go there. She _couldn't._

Tucker's face fell. "Christina, I love you. I trust you more than anyone. But there are some… things… that I just don't want you to have to be a part of. Things _I _don't want to be a part of. Before Danny was killed, things were manageable, but now that he's gone I don't know what to expect. All I know is that I can save you from it—trust me, you're _safer _not knowing."

Christina was shocked into silence, not the least by the fact that he had willingly mentioned Danny's name, out loud—something he'd avoided doing at all costs for the past month. But she wasn't going to back down. She had to _know,_ or it would drive her crazy.

"That's not how this works, Tucker. I'm not just marrying the part of you that's good and safe and stable. I'm marrying your problems too, but I need to know about them. Let me help you."

He shook his head. "I can't. I can't put you in danger like that. If you got hurt because of it, I'd never forgive myself…"

The sound of Tucker's cell phone vibrating on the table made them both jump. He tried to ignore it, but she could tell that he was itching to answer it. She sighed. "We'll talk about this later. You should get that."

Relief washed over his face, and he kissed her gently. "Thank you," he whispered. Then he snatched up the phone and left the room, absentmindedly turning out the light as he left.

Christina sighed and sat down at the kitchen table in the dark, resting her head in her hands. She could hear Tucker's muffled voice coming from the next room, but she was too lost in her thoughts to process what he was saying.

What could possibly have happened—what could possibly be going on in Tucker's life that she didn't know about? What horrible nightmare from his past haunted him? She could sense that it was always there, always at the back of his mind, ignored but never forgotten. He had grown jumpier, more tense, more easily startled; he was always looking over his shoulder, as if he expected to see some shadowy figure following him wherever he went. Three weeks ago, she come home to her apartment in the city to find him packing her things into his car, insisting that they had to leave town and refusing to tell her why. That had been when they had come here, to the old manor-like house miles outside of a nameless backwater town that the world had forgotten about. He never gave her an explanation, a reason for his erratic behavior, and until now she had deemed to just go along with it. But her curiosity was killing her just as surely as the anxiety was killing him.

_Why won't he just tell me? I could be helping him. What could be so bad that he's afraid to even talk about it?_

Suddenly Tucker rushed back into the dining room, jolting her out of her spiral of dark thoughts. "Christina," he said frantically, with panic in his voice and eyes, "I need you to do one last thing for me, and then I promise I'll tell you everything. But you can't ask me any questions about what I'm going to tell you to do, alright?"

She felt like she'd just been doused with a bucket of cold water. Was this the same guilty-faced fiancée who'd just told her that he _couldn't _tell her anything? Who had been on the other end of that phone call, and what had they said to scare him so badly? She nodded in agreement, waiting with bated breath for his request.

"I need you to go to Taiwan."

"What? Taiwan? Tucker, are you… are you maybe going a little bit crazy?"

He shook his head, like a dog trying to get water out of its ears. "Okay, not Taiwan. But you need to get away, far away from here. West Coast, maybe, or you could go to Canada… or how about Hawaii? You'd like Hawaii, right?"

"Um…" _That settles it. My fiancée is crazy. I should have started looking into asylums a long time ago._

"Oh, it doesn't matter! Just… go somewhere, far away, all right? You name the place, I'll get you a plane ticket and you can leave first thing in the morning. Where do you want to go?"

"My sister lives in Anaheim…"

"Perfect! California's plenty far enough, and you can visit your sister, and it'll be perfectly normal." She bit back a snort of caustic laughter, but he continued as if he hadn't even heard her. "Go pack what you need for a couple weeks, and I'll get your ticket printed off. Okay? Hurry!"

Feeling a little dazed, she wandered up to the bedroom, dragging out the suitcase from the hall closet on her way. _Why am I going along with this? He's obviously suffering from temporary insanity. Should I be playing along with him, or would it be healthier to make him confront whatever issue he's facing? _All the evidence pointed to the latter, but she kept on packing. He said that if she did this last favor for him, he'd explain everything. Isn't that what she wanted? Besides, she had been meaning to visit her sister for months now.

Just as she was tucking her toothbrush among the folds of her clothes in the suitcase, something caught her eye. It was Tucker's laptop, sitting innocently on top of his pillow. Her fingers itched to open it up, read his journal, find out _now _what all of this weirdness was about; but what if Tucker came in while she was reading? He had already promised to tell her everything afterwards... _But who knows how long you'll be gone? He didn't say anything about that. It could be weeks!_

She kept staring at the laptop, fighting the temptation until she couldn't any longer. She caved, snatching the laptop from where it lay and sliding it under the top layers of clothes in her suitcase. Then, before her conscience could get the better of her, she flung the lid of the suitcase shut, zipped it, and snapped on a luggage lock. Then she stood there, staring at the suitcase and breathing heavily as though she'd just run the length of a football field.

"Christina?" Tucker called from the bottom of the stairs. She jumped violently before getting a grip on herself.

"I'm up here!" she called, trying to make her voice sound normal. What did normal sound like?

He thundered up the stairs. "I have to go. But I'm leaving the car, and your ticket is on the kitchen table. Promise me you'll get on that plane tomorrow, Christina."

"I promise." She expected him to notice any minute that his laptop wasn't where he'd left it and demand to know where she'd put it, but his eyes never strayed from her face. "Wait—you're leaving the car? Where are you going?"

He pulled her into a tight hug. "I can't tell you. But I promise I'll explain everything when you get back."

"I'll hold you to it," she said, hugging him fiercely back. Suddenly she was afraid, but she couldn't say why. "You'll… you'll be here when I get back? For sure?"

He didn't answer for a long time. "Let's hope so," he finally whispered. "Let's hope so." He drew away from her and turned to leave. "Don't call me, okay? I'll try to call you every few days."

"I love you," she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I love you too. Don't worry, I'll call you." He left; she stood there until she heard the front door shut and lock behind him, and then collapsed on the bed next to her suitcase, guiltily thinking of the laptop hidden with it, and the things it would soon have to tell her.


End file.
